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Topic: Is America Cursed? (Read 15781 times)

I know the atheists here don't believe in "superstitions" and what not, so this question is more for the theist in the forum. I hope that the atheist members will have some input here as well.

I was watching the news last night. They were reporting on the Ok. tornado. At the end of the story they closed with an alarming fact. America suffers 10 times more than Canada @ 100 per year. Do the math that is 1000 per year. Thankfully they are not all as destructive as the most recent one. It did however get me to thinking that maybe America is cursed. It was taken by force from native americans and enslaved and beat Africans for hundreds of years.

I was cooking dinner, I can't remember what broadcast I was watching, so sorry. I did find this website w/ tornado facts.

I was watching the news last night. They were reporting on the Ok. tornado. At the end of the story they closed with an alarming fact. America suffers 10 times more than Canada @ 100 per year. Do the math that is 1000 per year. Thankfully they are not all as destructive as the most recent one. It did however get me to thinking that maybe America is cursed.

Nothing so exotic as that. It's simply that the climate in the Midwest is more "amenable" to creating tornadoes than the climate in most of Canada. Canada, for the most part, has long, cold winters and short, mild summers. Tornadoes rarely form in colder weather because they rely on thunderstorms for their formation, and thunderstorms are for the most part a warm weather phenomenon. It's no more a curse than it is a curse on Canada that they get more snow than Oklahoma does.

Tornadoes have been a part of North America for 100s of years. The warm air coming up from the gulf waters mixes with the cool air off of the Rockies. Flat planes make for the perfect tornado ally area that we have. Its nature at work...bottom line.

I was watching the news last night. They were reporting on the Ok. tornado. At the end of the story they closed with an alarming fact. America suffers 10 times more than Canada @ 100 per year. Do the math that is 1000 per year. Thankfully they are not all as destructive as the most recent one. It did however get me to thinking that maybe America is cursed.

Nothing so exotic as that. It's simply that the climate in the Midwest is more "amenable" to creating tornadoes than the climate in most of Canada. Canada, for the most part, has long, cold winters and short, mild summers. Tornadoes rarely form in colder weather because they rely on thunderstorms for their formation, and thunderstorms are for the most part a warm weather phenomenon. It's no more a curse than it is a curse on Canada that they get more snow than Oklahoma does.

But Florida's tropical and we get a shitload of rain which makes it cooler[1] but we have not only tornadoes but hurricanes, too!

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

Japan probably gets more tsunamis than the US. Canada probably gets more blizzards/snowstorms than the US. The Middle East probably gets more sandstorms than the US. These are all naturally occurring events that are not new. Certain weather events are more likely in certain places - topography, climate, ocean proximity, size of land mass in question, all of these have a role in weather events.

Don't fall for the evangelical explanation of God judging us - it only holds up until you think. Other places have fatalities due to weather, and they are just as likely to have strong beliefs in their own gods too. Thus, even if god exists, unless he is responsible for all weather events he is responsible for none of them.

The US is not unique in being brutal to natives upon settlement. Australia has a bloody history that's comparatively recent as well - the aboriginals did not fare well under the new settlers. The British Empire was not a peace-promoting mission, it was a violent expansive land and power grab. It's a pattern that holds true for almost every expansion throughout history and is hardly specific to this country. If your premise were valid, the entire planet would have been wiped out centuries ago.

Read up on hard/soft/sticky power and then compare that information to world history. It can be quite eye-opening to see who employed what method, what was going on in the world at the time (because we might hate politics but it's too significant to ignore it if we want to understand the world we live in) and what the results actually were.

I was watching the news last night. They were reporting on the Ok. tornado. At the end of the story they closed with an alarming fact. America suffers 10 times more than Canada @ 100 per year. Do the math that is 1000 per year. Thankfully they are not all as destructive as the most recent one. It did however get me to thinking that maybe America is cursed.

Nothing so exotic as that. It's simply that the climate in the Midwest is more "amenable" to creating tornadoes than the climate in most of Canada. Canada, for the most part, has long, cold winters and short, mild summers. Tornadoes rarely form in colder weather because they rely on thunderstorms for their formation, and thunderstorms are for the most part a warm weather phenomenon. It's no more a curse than it is a curse on Canada that they get more snow than Oklahoma does.

But Florida's tropical and we get a shitload of rain which makes it cooler[1] but we have not only tornadoes but hurricanes, too!

What, exactly and in the sense you use it, is a curse?How do curses work? (The answer must not contain reference to magic or other supernatural causes.)Who is able to curse things and what powers do they have to do this?

Simpleton answers like, "A curse is something you say and it happens." will score 0 marks, we want to know the physical mechanism relating the words to the event.

We Aboriginal Americans would have cursed "whitey" with plagues along time ago,but were cursed with a plague from "whitey" short after his arrival .......some would just plain call it germ warfare,Smallpox....but I am sure we viewed it as a curse as we died by the thousands.

If curses worked we would still be many Indian nations roaming free in our territories......but maybe some curses are stronger than others.

What, exactly and in the sense you use it, is a curse?How do curses work? (The answer must not contain reference to magic or other supernatural causes.)Who is able to curse things and what powers do they have to do this?

Simpleton answers like, "A curse is something you say and it happens." will score 0 marks, we want to know the physical mechanism relating the words to the event.

Waiting patiently for jb to define and clarify her terms....

Logged

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

I think the OP is right. America is cursed. Because, you see, we haven't legalized gay marriage nation-wide like Canada. So until we do, Junebug, expect more horrible stuff. I personally expect the new lineup of Fall reality shows to be a complete disaster, for instance.

Is Bangladesh cursed? The Sudan? They certainly have more weather related deaths per year than the US. And weather in those nations has destroyed attempts at creating and maintaining the kind of infrastructure that we in the first world are accustomed to.

But why focus just on weather? There are so many natural disasters. We've seen Japan devastated by a tsunami, and a few years before that, the massive tsunami of 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people. Earthquakes? Haiti is still recovering from the devastation of its most recent earthquake. Mexico City, Santiago Chile, and so many other national capitals have been devastated in recent decades.

Corporate greed (you hate greed, right?) has sure as hell caused hundreds of thousands of deaths (if not more) in recent decades. From the struggle over mining coltan in the Congo to the US State Department intervention to support United Fruits profits in Central America, to the deadly factory conditions all over the third world, there is incomprehensible human suffering. And the Oklahoma shelters in which these displaced families are temporarily living, are full of luxuries that most of the world does not have access to. Clean water. Electricity. Food. Wifi.

Cursed? The fact that such a huge percentage of our nation is composed of literate people who have leisure time to contemplate the question seems to indicate that our suffering and tragedies are minor compared to those of most of the rest of the world.

"Cursed" would, to me, imply that there is some external supernatural agent affecting what happens. If the climate or weather patterns of a particular part of the USA causes many more tornadoes than elsewhere, then that's the cause. No other agent is necessary. In the same way that places that sit on fault lines will experience more (and/or more severe) earthquakes than other places. And so on.

Our minds can be described as "pattern seeking missiles." We absolutely hate not knowing the why and how of anything, and if we cannot find it through research and study, we reach for anything else available. You will see this whenever there is a tragic occurrence. I can recall the insistence from some corners that the Columbine shootings were the result of violent video games. And I understand that Pat Robertson has blamed the recent tornadoes in Oklahoma on a lack of prayer. Although that latter is less because it satisfies a need for answers and more because Pat Robertson is a repulsive opportunist and vile human being.

In any case, I don't believe in curses. I believe that we identify patterns where there are none and call them curses, or lack of prayer, or whatever gives us the answer we want.

No more cursed than people who live in New Orleans who have to deal with frequent hurricanes, or people who live in California who have to deal with frequent earthquakes, or people who live in India who have to deal with monsoons, or people in Japan who have to deal with typhoons...the list goes on and on.

The fact that such a huge percentage of our nation is composed of literate people who have leisure time to contemplate the question seems to indicate that our suffering and tragedies are minor compared to those of most of the rest of the world.

True. I was having dinner a few months back with a friend of mine who's a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. She told me about this concept called a "First World Problem".

Example: This afternoon, I have to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled, which sucks. The cavity is on one of my wisdom teeth, which sucks even more because it will be difficult for the dentist to get to. I'm preparing for this by getting ready to take my sedatives before I see the dentist, bringing my iPod Touch with me so I can listen to Steve Roach's "Quiet Music 2" while the dentist is working, scheduling my meals so that I'll be able to work my mealtimes around the dental work, and so on. (I even gave a lot of thought as to which clothes to wear today so I would be as comfortable as possible.)

This is a First World Problem, for reasons that are pretty obvious once the notion occurs to you. One cavity, which I'm able to have properly taken care of (with money out of my own pocket), with paid time off from work, after having had enough to eat, with soothing music I can listen to and sedatives I can take to help me relax, blah blah blah blah blah. I haven't ever actually looked into it, but I'd bet a year's pay that there are many millions of people in the world who have never seen a dentist at all or who can't afford to see one. Ditto for MP3 players and, of course, having enough to eat.

No I would not say it is cursed as I am sure you are not surprised I would say that.

However, America's climate makes it more prone to things like tornadoes than some countries, Canada doesn't suffer so much because it has a different climate. Same as the UK, but we do seem a lot more prone to rain. It's just like any where along the fault lines on any of the tectonic plates are more prone to earthquakes and in some instances, it can be on a pretty large scale. It's just the way the natural world works. Unfortunately tornadoes is one of those forms of weather than can be pretty destructive. We even get them in the UK, but for us, they are very minor, but our climate doesn't really suit a tornado well enough to give it the destructive power it needs.

But America isn't the only country to suffer from devastating climates, I mean, for many parts of Africa it means lack of crop growth due to the massive heat waves and lack of rain. Japan and many of the Islands East of Australia are prone to typhoons.

There is no place on the planet that not prone to some sort of natural hazards. The earth is a very volatile and generally inhospitable place, especially for human beings. Imagine trying to live on the earth naked and without a shelter. Most of the earth is too hot, too cold, too windy, too rocky, too wet, etc. for human beings au naturel to survive in anything like comfort. We have to work really hard to make the earth a nice place to live.

(That is why it is so strange that creationists try to argue that the planet earth is the "perfect" made-by-god home for humans. )

The places that people really like to populate are places close to water. But nice watery places, like river valleys, ocean coastlines, tropical areas and volcanic islands, are the most dangerous areas of all.

The most stable areas-- from the standpoint of natural hazards-- are the centers of continents away from tectonic plate ridges, the polar regions and the middle of large deserts. Flat, boring, featureless places with no vegetation, far from water and far from volcanic mountains. Mongolia, Antarctica are very safe from earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis. Very difficult to farm or fish, so unlikely to attract large populations.

Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Japan and the Caribbean are highly populated, beautifully varied and get way more than their share of disasters. The more beautiful and varied the landscape, the more likely it is to kick yer a$$.